A Review of Software Design Visualization

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A Review of Software Design Visualization

• Thomas LaToza
• SSSG Seminar
• 11/18/2004

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You are here
Related problems
Constraints
Bugs
Reuse
Design decisions
Crosscutting
Context
Search
Software design visualization
Related approaches
Plan recognition
Smell detectors
Aspect oriented programming
Question answering
Program understanding
Concept assignment
Clone detection
Hypothesis testing
Revere engineering
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Overview

• Overview of a number of recent software
  visualization tools
• Tree visualizations
• Line visualizations
• Boxes and lines visualizations
• Grid visualizations
• Picture visualizations
• Subjective comparison and conclusions
• Whats missing

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• Tree
• FEAT (Robillard Murphy, 2003)
• JQuery (Eisenberg De Volder, 2004)
• Design Snippets (Sazawal Notkin, in submission)
• Line
• SeeSoft (Eick, Ball)
• Aspect Browser (Griswold, Yuan, Kato, 2001)
• Aspect Mining Tool (Hannemann Kiczales, 2001)
• Tarantula (Jones, Harrold, Stasko, 2002)
• Concern Modeling Environment (Tarr, Harrison,
  Ossher, 2004)
• Boxes and lines
• UML Class Diagram
• Components Connectors Acme (Schmerl Garlan,
  2004)
• Reflexion Model jRMTool (Murphy, Notkin,
  Sullivan, 1995)
• Dr. Jones (Foltz, 2003)
• Software Factories UML, Components Connectors
  (Greenfield Short, 2004)
• Data flow diagrams, UML sequence diagrams,
• Graph
• Star Diagram (Hayes, Griswold, Moskovics, 1999)

Citations of the most recent paper about each
visualization
Green Will cover
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General Thoughts

• Visualization tool is
• Selection of information and relationships to
  display
• E.g. Superclass, modified by developer, LOC
• Assignment of information and relationships to a
  visual representation
• Configurability
• What information displayed together
• How many LOC can you run it on
• Supports particular software design task deemed
  important
• Components connectors protocols
• Snippets factoring decisions
• SeeSoft understanding global implications

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Some representative tasks

• If I change this location in the code, how will
  that crosscutting concern be affected?
  (Baniassad et al, 2002) (crosscutting search)
• How should I decompose this feature? (forward
  engineering)

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Tree Visualizations
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Feature Exploration Analysis Tool
Downloadable for Eclipse
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• Use cases
• Search for scattered info
• How is this data structure used?
• Where is this menu created?
• What are all the methods involved in IO
  operations on this buffer?
• View concerns
• Describe concern with elements and relationships
  from elements

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Projection View Traverse relationships
between elements to find elements
Relative to class, interface All
members transitive, not transitiveSuper,
subclass, interface Constructor calls Relative
to field Type Accessed by Relative to
method Constructs, parameter, return
types Field accesses Call Override Using (fields,
call, constructs)
Relationships
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JQuery
Downloadable for Eclipse
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JQuery

• Relationships same as FEAT plus
• Throws
• Same signature
• Compiler warnings / errors
• Bookmarks
• Tasks
• Use case
• Search for crosscutting impact across
  relationships on the results of a query
• Empirical validation

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Design Snippets
Downloadable for Eclipse
Use case Finding information hiding violations
Interface Public methods, fields Superclasses /
superinterfaces Implementation Private methods,
fields Secret types not externally visible
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Type Relationships Implements Extends Creates Has
paramater Return value Uses field Casts to
Use case Reasoning about coupling
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Defacto interface Set of members used by a client
Use case Consideration of removing a dependency
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Line Visualizations
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SeeSoft
Color Code age - green old
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Color Blue old, red - new
Use case Bug fixing vs. new development
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Use case - coverage
Color program execution count
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Use case program slicing
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Tarantula
Color code coverage Red failed test
case Green past test case Yellow hue is of
test cases passing
Use case Fault localization
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AspectBrowser
Downloadable for Eclipse
Use case code navigation
Color - aspect
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Concern Manipulation Environment
Downloadable for Eclipse
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Boxes and Lines Visualizations
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UML Class Diagram
Relationships Members of a class Superclass /
subclass Composition
Use cases Forward engineering Reverse engineering
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Reflexion Model - jRMTool
Downloadable for Eclipse
High level model specified first by developer
Reflexion model dependencies found by
tool Solid convergence, dashed divergence,
dotted absence Use case separate
modules Describe architecture (dependencies),
iteratively change architecture / code
till agreement
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Components Connectors (Acme)
Downloadable for Eclipse
Relationships - protocols describing component
composition
Use case - forward engineering decomposition and
architectural analysis
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Graph Visualizations
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Design Pattern Rational Graph
Use case Understand how code implements a design
pattern to improve performance by depicting
design goals
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Creole
Downloadable for Eclipse
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(No Transcript)
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Grid Visualizations
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Treemap
Linux Kernel (linear scale)
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Hierarchical Call Matrices
Philips Medical Systems, 300 developers 12
architects, 3 million LOC, 25k classes
Grid component contains function call Zoom
level aggregation into components Color green
allowed by architecture red - not
allowed by architecture
To what degree does the current implementation
conform to the architecture specification? Are
there any calls made that are not allowed? Which
subsystems are affected if a subsystem is
changed? Or, in other words, which subsystems
call or are called by the changed subsystem? What
are the changes in the system over time?
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Source Viewer 3D
Use case Profiling?
Visualization of one source file Cylinder line
of code Color function membership Height
execution count
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Picture Visualizations
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FSMView
Downloadable
Right picture IEEE 1394 (25k states)
Relationship Edges transitions Nodes
- states
Use case Understanding a protocol by looking at
shape and symmetry
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Subjective evaluation and comparison

• CME seems to be a black hole for crosscutting
• SeeSoft, Reflexion models, FEAT, JQuery,
  AspectBrowser, )
• Mostly reverse engineering
• Other than ACME, UML class diagrams
• But trying to guide design decisions

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Whats missing

• Relationship traversal AND color query results
  AND structure
• Further annotating Creole style call graph
  visualization?
• Direct manipulation / refactoring
• What is this member doing here?? Because of
  coupling / cohesion / modularity, I want to move
  it over there now!
• Constraints on a design decision before, not
  after
• Unit test failures
• Architecture violations
• Bad performance
• Poor reusability
• Hard to read code
• Team ownership
• Rationale behind the constraints
• My decision is overconstrained which constraint
  should I change??
• Version control information
• Who made this decision, what were they working
  on, what were they thinking??

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Questions?